1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to techniques for sharing network identifiers (IDs) associated with users, such as e-mail addresses or other IDs.
2. Background
In order for two people to interact online, each person must typically provide the other with a network identifier (ID). A network ID may be an e-mail address or any other ID that uniquely identifies a user within the context of a product, network, or service. For a variety of reasons, the process of exchanging network IDs has become a cumbersome one. One reason for this is that, as namespaces have become more crowded, the IDs available to users have become increasingly obscure. For example, a user named Jane Doe may be required to use an obscure network ID such as “janedoe2337@yahoo.com” because “janedoe@yahoo.com” and close variants thereof may already be in use. Such obscure network IDs are difficult to remember and therefore difficult to share with others.
Another reason that the process of exchanging network IDs has become cumbersome is that many users today have a variety of different network IDs. For example, it is not uncommon for a given user to have one or more personal e-mail addresses, a work-related e-mail address, and one or more network IDs corresponding to various business networking services (e.g., LinkedIn®, Ecademy™ or XING™) and/or social networking services (e.g., MySpace®, Facebook®, or Bebo®). It is often impossible for a user to remember each of these network IDs and therefore difficult to relate this information to others.
One potential solution to these issues surrounding sharing network IDs is for a user to carry a comprehensive list of all of his/her network IDs on a card that could be given to another person. However, such a card would need to be replaced each time the user added, deleted or modified a network ID. Furthermore, a user might not want to share all of his/her network IDs with another person. Rather, the user might want to share only a subset of his/her network IDs, such as only those network IDs associated with business networking services, or only those network IDs associated with social networking services. In this case, the user would need to carry a separate card for each possible subset of network IDs that he/she may wish to share. Once again, each of the separate cards would need to be replaced each time the user added, deleted or modified a network ID that was listed on the card. Such a solution to the issue of sharing network IDs is neither convenient nor practical.
Another issue related to the sharing of network IDs is that of blocking unwanted communications. For example, in the scenario described above, a user provides another person with a card that lists one or more of his/her network IDs. If the user later decide that he/she does not want to receive communications from the other person, the user must either have access to some sort of communication-blocking functionality for each of the shared network IDs or, absent such functionality, the user may be forced to change one or more of the shared network IDs. Furthermore, there is nothing to prevent the other person from sharing the network IDs with people or companies with whom the user would rather not interact.
What is needed, then, is a means by which a user can easily share one or more network IDs with others, even when the user has an obscure, hard-to-remember network ID and/or a large number of different network IDs. The desired means should preferably allow a user to aggregate network IDs into different groups depending on the type of networking that the user is seeking to accomplish (e.g., business networking vs. social networking) and to selectively share such groups of network IDs with other users. The desired means should also preferably provide a way for a user to easily obscure or otherwise control access to such network IDs by an intended recipient should the user decide at a later time that he/she does not wish to receive communications from the intended recipient or from another person or entity with whom the intended recipient might share such network IDs.